So, when I left you yesterday, I had 3 days before my first tournament with my corsairs and I had to paint 2 warp hunters, 4 hornets and a wasp from bare resin & plastic. I also intended to try a number of new techniques like airbrushing and using liquid mask for the first time on these models.
Yes I am that crazy.
Thursday
So Thursday dawns and I head out to the ObSec dungeon (aka my gaming room) to grab my spray paints and get started. I grab my corax white and the weapons for the corsairs hornets, wasp and warp hunters. These all get a couple of thin coats of corax white – I love this undercoat colour for white finish parts as its slightly grey – making highlighting it with pure white a breeze.
I grab my painters tape and liquid mask next. The tape is an easy application – I wrap the white gun barrels to protect them from the black spray to come and then turn my attention to the liquid mask. It’s a product I have not used till now – from Vallejo, it’s basically a liquid silicone you can paint on to a model which will peel off relatively easily. Here we hit my first learning – don’t use a brush you intend to paint with in the future.
As the liquid starts to set you will get small beads of it drying in the bristles which ruin the brush. It’s already slightly tacky from the dropper bottle and remains so after setting. It also dries semitransparent which worried me at first.
So after applying the liquid to the clear canopies for the vehicles and setting them to one side to dry (which took a couple of hours in the aussie heat) I decided to paint the pilots for the hornets and wasps. Here we hit the next hurdle… by last can of black spray felt awfully light…
I hit the pilots in black – and managed to get the warp hunters black as well before the can finally emptied. As I was going to airbrush all the vehicles in one go the consolation of the hunters being black meant little. I knew I would not be able to get a can of spray before Friday with the shops all closed now.
Friday
Friday saw me helping DangerRod move furniture in the morning prior to getting into a GW store for chaos black spray. Say what you like about other brands, I have never had an issue with it and am willing to pay the costs for the finish I know I will get. I got home mid-afternoon with spray in hand and hit the weapons with black giving them the basis of a 2 tone finish. The masking tape came off easily and neatly – they would do for the weekend’s event.
I painted the corsairs pilots and the cockpit surrounds as I would normally and prepared for the next component of learning… attaching the canopies.
In the past I would have assembled the tanks after painting to allow me to use the swinging canopy arm built in. In this case – I had no intention of allowing the canopies to open for fear of the airbrush paint getting in so I had removed the internal tabs from the canopies and intended to use PVA (or white wood) glue to attach the canopies. I carefully laid down glue around the cockpit with a brush and set the canopies into the recess.
Once the canopies were in place and dried – I applied a second pass of the PVA glue directly into any gaps between the hull and canopy. I can’t stress enough how much the idea of spray getting in worried me so I was being extra careful in reducing this risk. With this done, I could do no more for the day.
Saturday
Saturday was a huge fuss and performance – the morning allowed me to take the black out and get the last of the spray paint done at least. I took the vehicles out with trepidation and hit them with black spray – over the canopies and all. From the outside it looked like the liquid mask had worked – but until I peeled it off it was like Schrodinger’s pilot – he was both cleanly painted and ruined overspray at the same time!
Sadly, this morning spray session was all I got until about 9pm Saturday night due to a combination of family commitments.
So at 9pm I have my new airbrush out and set up – having only tested it a little and broad strokes single colour test prayed with it before. Like all good Eldar players, I was fortunate to have a spare falcon on hand to test my corsairs colour scheme out on – which is where I located my next challenge.
A few weeks back I had picked up a range of blues and reds in airbrush paints, still unsure about the scheme. On the Saturday night I decided they would be blue. I had 3 blue paints (or so I believed) – dark mid and light tones. Turns out my mid tone was actually blue grey. I test out painting gradients for half an hour with the colours on hand (mixing 50/50 dark and light for the mid tone). It works ok and I learn a lot about control of paint flow and air pressure in the process.
Once the colours are down I hit the tank with gloss varnish in preparation for the black lining of the panels with ink. This worked really well and with a coat of matt varnish I was ready to risk it all on what was essentially 250 pounds of forgeworld models.
While going through my paints in dropper bottles during the process I find an army painter blue which was exactly the right tone and it’s a god send! Yes I need to thin it but that’s a minor issue – I have my mid tone now.
It’s now midnight but the airbrushing is done. I hit them all with gloss varnish – 2 at a time – and duck back into the house to hold them under the air conditioning so they don’t frost up. I spend the next couple of hours black lining the hulls before doing the matt varnish plus aircon bath just before 3am.
The guns go on and I admire my handy work. I added a little gold detail to the tails of the tanks which I had not hit with the airbrush on purpose – another thing to be fixed on another day. It’s at this point I have a choice… I can take the liquid mask off and risk what’s underneath or wait till morning. I elect option one, reasoning that if I need to – I can cut away the glue, repaint the pilot and reattach the canopies there and then… who needs sleep after all! Turns out it was a needless worry – the mask worked brilliantly (and easily removed with a toothpic and some care) and the seal was good on the canopies.
So it’s now past 3am the day of the event and my corsairs army is looking pretty good. Is it finished? Not by my standards and certainly not for LVO but it will do for the day. I finally get to bed around 3.30am (for what would be 3 and ½ hours sleep) after finishing packing the gear for the event. I would pack the army in the morning once it had enough time for the varnish to fully cure. All things considered – pretty freaking good for 6 hours work!
I run a little late Sunday (with so little sleep it’s no surprise) and get into the venue just 5 mins before the cut off for registration…